One of the most common health problems among people today is obesity. The condition is linked to ingestion of a greater number of calories than are expended. Fat comprises a concentrated source of calories in a person's diet, and thus, there remains a continuing need to reduce and/or replace fat in food products. One way of reducing and/or replacing fat content in food products is through the employment of non-digestible fats (e.g., sucrose polyesters). Because replacing higher percentages of fat with sucrose polyester (“SPE”) will correspondingly lower the number of calories in a food product, there is a continuing need for sucrose polyester containing compositions.
Sucrose polyesters, because of their bulk and shape, form different crystalline structures having melting profiles that are quite dissimilar to certain natural fats and oils. Typically, sucrose polyesters meeting the compositional restrictions of Olestra®, as approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration, have a very flat melting profile across a broad temperature range. By fully hydrogenating sucrose polyesters, it is possible to increase the melting point by converting sucrose polyesters containing unsaturated carbon chains into sucrose polyesters containing saturated carbon chains; however, the melting profile of such sucrose polyesters remains flat, resulting in a high solids content at body temperatures (approximately 37° C.). When these fully hydrogenated sucrose polyesters are incorporated into food products, such a high solids content causes an undesirable, waxy mouth feel for the consumer eating the food product. This is particularly disadvantageous when the sucrose polyesters are incorporated into cheese, chocolate or other confections because such products are favored by the consumer, in part, due to a particular mouth feel associated with these types of products. In other words, certain food products (e.g., cheese, chocolates, frostings, icings, ice creams, etc.) may be particularly preferred because of the products' ability to melt in a consumer's mouth.
An alternate way to combat the flat melting profile of sucrose polyesters is though a hydrogenation process that coverts only a portion of the double bonds to saturated fatty acids, coverts another portion of the double bonds to trans fatty acids and leaves the remaining double bonds unchanged (remaining in the cis configuration). The resulting sucrose polyester composition has a broad melting point range and this material is a type of what is typically referred to as an intermediate melting fraction (“IMF”) Like the fully hydrogenated sucrose polyesters, the IMF sucrose polyester composition also has a significant amount of solids at body temperature (i.e., greater than 10%). When used at 100% to produce food products, the finish products have waxy mouth feel and are found to be poorly accepted.
Thus, there remains a continuing need for a fat substitute that can be incorporated into food products, wherein the fat substitute provides a consumer with a desired mouth-feel when eating the food products.